The State may cut tax deduction exemptions to balance the budget. At least, that’s what some Alabama republicans are suggesting. Governor Robert Bentley will propose Alabama's first major revenue-raising package since 2003. Since then, the General Fund budget has been patched together with borrowed money, federal stimulus funds and other non-recurring revenue. Bentley says he's working a bold, long-term solution to make the budget work. The one thing Bentley says he won’t support is the expansion of gambling. `
The City of Huntsville has the opportunity to win a five million dollar grant. APR student reporter Josh Hoppenstein explains the goal is to make the city more energy efficient…
Huntsville is competing in a competition being put on by Georgetown University. The competition is about lowering energy consumption in cites. Harry Hobbs is the Public and Governmental Affairs Liaison for Huntsville Utilities. He says that Huntsville’s utilities company is really taking the spirt of this completion to heart…
“We want to come up with economical solutions to meeting the country’s growing demand for energy in the future. We want to just be a part of that, we want to be a part of that, we want to be one of the industry leaders in working with our customers.”
The competition will begin In January. It runs through the end of the year 2016. For APR news, I’m Josh Hoppenstein in Tuscaloosa.
Meet the inaugural class for the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. Twelve writers will be inducted in June next year. The University of Alabama is home to the Alabama Center for the Book which worked with the Alabama Writers Forum to pick the inductees. Harper Lee, Helen Keller and Zora Neal Hurston are part of the first group along with Rick Bragg, Andrew Glaze, and Helen Norris Bell.
If you're worried about overeating during the holidays, a device being tested at the University of Alabama just might help. It's called an automatic ingestion monitor. The device has sensors that keep track of what you eat and how. Associate professor Edward Sazonov is working on the sensor. He says it's designed to not in the way of the user.
“The device looks like a Bluetooth headset that you wear around your ear. What it does is monitor jaw motion during food intake and recognizes food intake over conditions like talking, walking and other types of physical activity.”
Sazonov says there is also a camera attached to take pictures of what is being eaten for monitoring purposes. He is leading the project that has received a one-point-eight-million dollar five year grant from the National Institute of Health. ?